


Trope: Hair Playing

by Agib



Series: Irondad Bingo! [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: ? - Freeform, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Hair Playing, I think?, Irondad Bingo 2019, It tried to auto-correct to hair pulling and I'm upset about it, Precious Peter Parker, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 00:17:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20648087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agib/pseuds/Agib
Summary: Tony Stark may or may not be upset about having to 'lay low' in a shitty motel of the interstate. Peter Parker may or may not be upset about having to drastically change his appearance.Red-coloured fluff ensues.





	Trope: Hair Playing

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even have the right to say hiatus - _It's literally been like two months what even_ \- but it's been forever since I last posted so... hope the fluff makes up for it <3

Maybe if they hadn’t been backed into a corner, they wouldn’t be in this position right now. Or at least, Tony hoped they wouldn’t ever voluntarily put themselves in this position because it would be incredibly hard to explain to May – and anyone else who knew the kid too.

But here they were. Holed up in some cheap motel bathroom with grimy tiles that Tony would never even _consider_ as a potential place to stay for the night. He had a strict five stars only rule. Regardless, they had to stay below the radar, which was proving to be a lot more challenging than Tony had hoped – considering the sink had someone else’s hair in it.

“May’s gonna kill you,” Peter muttered unhappily as Tony put the box on the counter in the bathroom.

“She’ll understand once this blows over,” he argues a little unconfidently. _God, he hoped she’d understand_.

“Uh huh,” Peter hums. He settles himself down on a fold out chair from the small dining area and stares into the mouldy bathroom mirror. “What if it starts burning or something?” He tilted his head to watch Tony, a piece of hair falling over his face from where it had been tucked behind his ear. He blinked, squinted, tried to read the box from beneath his mentor’s arm.

“You’ll be fine, it won’t start burning.” Peter opens his mouth to argue but Tony cuts him off quickly. “You’re literally a super-human with accelerated healing, I’m telling you it’ll be fine.” He sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose and looks down into wide brown eyes. “Pete, I swear on my life and my legacy –” Peter snorts “– It’ll come out great. I’ve done this plenty of times back in my day.”

“Yeah… but what if it comes out like – gross or ugly?” Tony softens slightly and pauses, resting a hand on the boy’s shoulder sincerely.

“It’ll be fine kiddo; we can always change it back.” Tony’s eyes dart up to the head of untameable brown curls that Peter never seemed to know what to do with. “Besides, I can always shave it off if you hate it.” In an instant, Peter’s eyes went wide.

“What?!” He squeaked, snapping his head up to glare at Tony, who was already stifling his amusement. “There is no way in hell,” Peter seethed, “I’m letting you butcher this.” Tony nodded, feigning a serious nod. “I’m strong enough to pin you down and… and – and permanent marker your face before a press conference or something.” Peter muttered icily.

Tony laughed and peeled off the sticker on the box, pulling it open and unfolding a page of instructions bigger than his entire torso. “We’re doing a full head application right?” Tony continued reading. “Right, Mr. Stark?”

“Uh, yeah – looks like it,” Tony mumbled, turning the instructions around until he found the English version. He sighed, rubbing his forehead and ignoring the slowly growing migraine he was nursing. “I cannot believe we’re holed up in this grimy, shitty –”

“Stop complaining, you’re not the one who’s having to go red,” Peter shot back. “Can we just – let’s just get it over with,” he said impatiently. He caught the look Tony gave him in the mirror. “I’m allergic to suspense,” he joked.

“Let’s hope you’re not allergic to anything else then, huh?” Tony shook the box until the supplies rattled out over the countertop. He paused, turning to look at Peter, “should we do an allergy patch though? Just in case?” 

“I don’t have allergies,” Peter deadpanned. He was well-used to his mentor’s worrying by now. “Super-human, remember?” Tony rolled his eyes as he squeezed a small tube of something into a bottle of something else. Peter watched in interest. “Promise me you know what you’re doing, yeah?” He asked shakily as Tony shook up a bottle of greasy looking stuff.

“Kid, don’t patronise me,” Tony laughed. “You ready?” He hovered a bottle over Peter’s head, resting one hand on the back of his neck to keep him in place, not that he needed to.

“Uh…” Peter swallowed visibly.

“Great,” Tony ploughed ahead. “Let’s do this.”

\----

If Tony was being honest, the thick, wavering scent of chemicals was far better then what the motel bathroom had smelled like before they started. Judging by the look on Peter’s face, he agreed.

“Stop wriggling around, I don’t want to stain your skin,” Tony complained. The small shoulder under his palm stilled, but he could feel the jittery tension clear as day.

“It feels… weird though,” Peter complained. His eyes were shut, and each time the tip of the bottle brushed over his scalp he shivered. The heavy smell of the formula, plus the insistent crinkling of Tony’s plastic gloves and the sensation of fingers combing through his hair was almost overwhelming.

But the <strike>worst</strike> _best_ thing, was the fact that it felt _amazing_.

May had become graced in the art of calming her nephew down, and Peter was well versed in the sensation of careful hands brushing through his curls every few nights. May curled up on the couch with a living room full of reality T.V and Peter sat cross legged on the ground in front of her was a regular occurrence in their small apartment.

_You have your father’s hair_, she used to point out as her fingers brushed through it absentmindedly, eyes on the television with Peter either reading a book at her feet or scrolling lazily on his phone.

That was probably why having someone else he trusted so much combing fingers through his hair triggered something in him and had the tension seeping from his bones like jelly. It felt like an instantaneous relaxant, like what May’s health magazines always claimed essential oils would do, and Peter loved it. Having a hand playing with his hair was familiar, grounding, it made him feel safe. 

“You with me, kid? It’s not burning or anything, is it?” Tony’s voice tugged Peter’s wandering head back into place, and a small squeeze of his shoulder pulled him back into the present.

“Uh-huh,” he hummed, leaning back in the chair and giving Tony some more access.

“Don’t pass out,” the mechanic warned, moving to a section of hair behind the boy’s ear and away from his face. He was entirely oblivious to how relaxing it was to feel someone’s hand carding through your hair. “Also, don’t breathe this stuff in too much.” Peter smiled, closing his eyes again and focusing on the sounds of the bottle dripping dye into his hair. Tony rubbed small circles over patches of curls until they were evenly coated, Peter assumed. “Pretty sure I’m supposed to be using a brush or something for this,” Tony pointed out.

“Mm, s’ relaxing though,” Peter replied. He cracked open one eye quickly enough to catch a fond smile on his mentor’s face before shutting it again.

Tony rubbed the last of the dye into the scarlet mess of Peter’s head and proceeded to finger comb as much of it as he could. He smoothed it out across the boy’s scalp and peeled off his gloves, wrinkling his nose and dropping them into a small wastebasket before tearing open a shower cap and sticking it over the kid’s head.

“Lean back,” he said, dampening a paper towel and trying his best to rub away the maroon smudges across Peter’s forehead, ears and neck. “Now we wait.” He pushed the rest of the bottles into the trash so that only a packet of conditioner was left on the sink. “Your hair hasn’t been treated before, so we don’t really need to worry about it falling off,” he teased, watching Peter sit upright and pat the shower cap experimentally, as if to make sure none of his hair was falling off.

“That keeps catching me off guard,” the boy said after a moment, waving a finger in the direction of Tony’s face.

“Thanks,” Tony said dryly. Peter stifled a laugh.

“No, I mean your distinctive lack of facial hair,” he explained with a smirk. “It’s weird to see you without it.” Peter wasn’t even looking in Tony’s direction anymore, he was busy squishing his hair around under the shower cap. Tony stared at him in amusement.

“Well that’s kinda a staple of my appearance, so of course I’d get rid of it.” He rested a hand on top of the shower cap, squeezing gently and smirking when Peter frowned. The dye coated hair made a squelching noise when Tony poked at it.

“Are you saying my… brunette…ness is a pinnacle of my appearance?”

“Could be,” Tony said, shrugging. He looked down at his phone, reading all his updates from the team, checking how much progress they’d made.

This long haul down to MIT was supposed to be relaxing, and yet here they were holed up in some shady motel off the interstate with a box of hair dye and a razor as their only company. Just because the team’s security protocol was ‘lay low for a couple of hours’ didn’t mean Tony wouldn’t have half a mind to climb into his suit and physically fly his protégé down to his (potential) future college instead.

He’d been through this so many times, albeit minus the kid tagging along, and it was starting to get exhausting. One slightly suspicious phone call with one vaguely entertaining threat on his life and the entirety of S.H.I.E.L.D and his own team was telling him to make a pit stop and lay low until they could trace the call and make sure it was some grungy ex-fan in their Mom’s basement and nothing more.

Some ticked off ex-fan is what Tony had wished it could have been – but apparently that’s not how the world works. No, the world works like this:

He wanted to take his protégé down to his old college to give him a feel for the campus, even if he was barely brushing seventeen. He had wanted to road trip his way there with the kid with a stop or two along the way to fill up on world class burgers, but that _definitely_ wasn’t how the world worked.

And now they were here, in a negative-three-star motel surrounded by the smell of red hair dye, hurriedly ‘adjusting’ their appearances so they could slip back home without triggering a second bomb threat to their poor old rental car. _So yeah_, Tony thought to himself bitterly, _what a great road-trip this has been_.

“You look less like a billionaire-playboy-philanthropist and more like an actual genius,” Peter said, cutting Tony’s acrimonious thought process short. 

“What?” He choked on air, completely lost as to what context the kid was bathing in.

“Without the facial hair, I mean,” Peter answered, a curious look on his face. “You look less rich celebrity and more run-of-the-mill MIT alumni.” Tony rolled his eyes.

“Yeah well, wait till you’re one too,” he prodded, dragging himself back into the bathroom to watch as Peter continually squished around his slowly deepening scarlet hair which was still trapped beneath the shower cap.

“You really think they’ll accept me?” Peter asked with one eyebrow raised as Tony nonchalantly read the back of the box for the fifth time.

“Why wouldn’t they?”

Peter sighed, shrugging at Tony in the mirror.

“Maybe ‘cus I’m… y’know, just some kid from Queens with a kinda above average intellect and not much else.” Tony picked at a hangnail and straightened his back, putting the box down onto the counter and turning to face the boy still sat in the fold out chair.

“You’ve had an internship at Stark Industries since you were fifteen, haven’t gotten anything less than an ‘A’ in almost three years, won the decathlon for your school twice, and on a more irrelevant to MIT note – are a literal superhero-slash-vigilante.” Tony quirked an eyebrow at the kid and peeled away the shower cap. “Need me to say anything more?” Peter wrinkled his nose, gripping the edges of the fold out chair as Tony scooted him across the room to the bathtub. “I didn’t think so.”

Luckily for Tony, the shower had a detachable head, which meant all Peter had to do was tilt his neck to avoid red hair dye water staining the tiles. “Tell me if its too hot or too cold,” Tony said as he fiddled with the faucet temperature.

“It’s fine,” Peter mumbled, squeezing his eyes shut as Tony started to rinse the dye away down the plug hole. Swirls of copper and tinges of mildly purple looking patches washed down through the drain, and Tony couldn’t help but picture a crime scene clean up. He chuckled to himself when he forced his focus back to the kid in front of him, who currently had a big dopey smile curved across his face.

“You know, for a teenager you’re pretty bearable,” he said without thought. Peter laughed, long and loud, his cheeks pinkening.

“You’re an expert on compliments, Mr. Stark,” he teased. Tony shook his head fondly and rested one hand over Peter’s brow line to stop the warm water bouncing over his forehead from trickling into his eyes. _This was beginning to feel oddly domestic_, he noted.

Tony’s hands were turning slightly burgundy with how much he was combing through Peter’s hair to get rid of all the dye, but the relaxed expression on the kid’s face almost made it worth it. _And to think that Tony had worried the bomb threat would’ve scared the shit out of the poor kid_.

“I’m conditioning now,” he said, feeling awfully like a hairdresser as he squeezed the packet of cheap conditioner over the boy’s dark curls. Those curls looked a lot like Natasha’s first had when Tony saw her for the first time.

Peter’s grin only grew while Tony busied himself with making little circular motions into his scalp, scraping the conditioner over every little scarlet curl. He had a minuscule pocket of nostalgia bubbling in the pit of his chest, remembering how often his nanny would do the same for him while Maria and Howard were off at some press event.

“I remember helping Ned’s Mom do this when there was a lice outbreak in second grade,” Peter said, breaking the quiet that had washed over the bathroom.

“What a lovely thing to say while I’m washing your hair for you,” Tony said, dripping with sarcasm.

“My neck hurts,” Peter continued. Tony rolled his eyes for what felt like the seventh time. He waved the shower head over the sopping mop of hair, watching the last of the little red bubbles circling the drain.

“There. I’m done.” Tony said, feigning exhaustion. He draped a towel over Peter’s face as he wearily sat up. “I was lying before; I really have no idea if May’s gonna kill me or not.” Peter laughed from underneath the towel, rubbing his hands back and forth to dry his hair. The towel came away from his head tinged vaguely pink, but Tony was more focused on how the fluffed-up mess of curls was now entirely… he didn’t actually know how to describe it.

“How does it look? Why’re you pulling that face?” Peter said cautiously.

“It looks like… uh,” Tony glanced back over to the box, hiding his mouth when he read out the colour title. “Fiery red topaz.”

“Oh jeez.” Peter stood from the chair, rubbing his hands through his hair and wiping at the condensation on the mirror. “Oh my god I look like a stripper,” he exclaimed.

“Hey, woah – woah. Why is that the first comparison you’ve got?” Tony laughed, “you couldn’t have opened with a leprechaun joke?”

“It’s red, not orange, Mr. Stark. I look like someone out of –”

“Kid if the next word out of your mouth is porno I’m going to strangle you.”

“I was going to say The Little Mermaid!” Peter wailed. “You’re so gross!” He hauled the towel in Tony’s direction, running his hands through scarlet strands of hair and letting out a large breath of air. “I’m literally a carrot,” he cried.

“It doesn’t look _that_ bad,” Tony managed. “For an eight-dollar box of hair dye, I mean.”

“Shut up!” Peter screeched, looking around the sink for something else to throw.

“Okay, _okay_,” Tony placated, bringing his hands down to Peter’s shoulders and giving him a genuine look of encouragement. “It actually came out pretty well, kiddo.” He wasn’t lying, the kid looked like any stereotypical bundle of Irish joy. It seemed natural coloured enough to not draw unwanted attention, which was the idea from the beginning.

Peter folded his arms and blew out another long breath as Tony twirled a strand between his fingers, examining the colour.

“As long as you help me get it back to normal before summer break ends…” Peter grumbled.

“Swear on my life, kid.” Tony gave one last lingering look towards the curly red head in front of him before turning on his heel to re-read the ‘all clear’ the team had given him to get both their butts back into the new rental car parked outside and drive five hours back to NYC. He’d given up on the idea of subtly driving out to MIT without issue and decided maybe private jets weren’t so bad after all. “If May kills me, you better get my ashes mixed into a circuit board or something cool like that.”

“Sure thing,” Peter grinned, slinging his overfilled duffel bag over his shoulder – _seriously, who needed that many hoodies for one road trip_ – and trailed after Tony, not bothering to give the motel room a final once-over before they stepped out into the parking lot.

**Author's Note:**

> Personal headcanon Tony definitely messed around with hair-dye when he was in his playboy/party phase.
> 
> \----
> 
> Follow me on tumblr for more stuff!
> 
> @agib-2002
> 
> <3


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